Let me start by saying that I have been nothing but impressed with my Wenonah Prospector 15 since the day I got it. It has been everything I was hoping for - a good river boat, very maneuverable, excellent stability both initially and when heeled to the rails, excellent carrying capacity, etc. It is not fast, but I did not expect it to be.
I have primarily paddled it solo, from the bow seat facing backwards, trimmed with ballast in the other end. It is a bit of a nitpick, but the ballast situation has been somewhat inconvenient, as the placement of the bow seat requires a fair bit of weight for trimming. I have been filling a large dry sack with river water at the put ins, but the bag is heavy and unwieldy when filled with water, and is mildly inconvenient to dry out well when I get home (I usually set it up with a fan blowing on it so it won’t mildew, etc) and have to reposition it a few times over the course of the day to get it fully dry.
I’d like a more elegant solution, almost like a true solo canoe…. However, I really like this boat so I decided to add a third seat. I also figured it’s easy to change it back to stock, minus some new hardware in the gunwales if I didn’t like it.
The main reason I believe people do not do this on the P15 more frequently is that it is a very wide boat. The mfg. stated max width is 37”, although I measured it a little over that. I think plenty of people would prefer the ease of trimming from the center, and the ability to have better control with easier bow reach, but putting a seat in the center on this boat means a pretty far reach to the water that deters most people. I have read that Royalex/T-Formex boats can be narrowed, and thought I’d attempt it while I’m installing the new seat. This made things a little more tricky, and I wanted to do this very cautiously and without changing the performance of the boat too much. More on that in a little bit. Also, again, should be easy to go back to stock if I don’t like it. Due to the width, I went with a Northstar extra wide seat, they say it is reinforced for the wider span. To match I also used their thwarts and changed my handles out while I was at it. I really like their somewhat darker stained ash, and their thwarts are nicer looking. They kinda make the Wenonah yoke/thwarts look pretty clunky in comparison.
So here’s a rough placement “before” shot with the new seat laid over the original setup:
Before going very far I wanted to get an idea of what I was going to affect by narrowing the boat. I put the boat on my utility trailer and leveled the bed with the tongue jack, and a level in multiple places. To get an idea of how much I would affect the rocker, I measured from the trailer tongue to the tip of the stem in the bow, and from the concrete floor to the tip of the stem in the stern. Then, being careful to not move the boat, I removed the yoke and used a ratchet strap to *carefully* bring in the center. We then re-measured.
We found that by bringing the center in 2”, it caused both stems to drop by ~1/2”. This boat has a ton of rocker and maneuverability, so this loss at the stems did not seem to be a deal breaker for me. Additionally, the tumblehome became a little more pronounced as one would expect. Maximum width below the gunwales is hard to measure, and did change a little, but appeared to be less than I expected. The boat also measured slightly deeper according to my father but I did not verify this. I assume the boat is also slightly longer than it was before, but didn’t measure as it wasn’t a big concern of mine.
We left the ratchet strap in place to install both thwarts, and then removed it before installing the seat. Before cutting the thwarts or seat we made blanks/dummy pieces to check the fit and our measurements and I’m glad we did. Matching the taper of the boat on the ends of the pieces was a little more challenging than expected and several of the blanks we cut ended up too short by ~1/4” or so. This also happened when measuring the seat width because the drops place the seat at a different width than up near the gunwales. Using the blanks, we were able to make critical corrections before actually cutting the seat/thwarts. With this method everything came out great in the end with a good fit.
For the seat, I wanted it quite a bit higher than the stock Wenonah seats. I’ve never been able to kneel comfortably in this boat due to how low the seats are and how difficult it is to get my feet under them. I’ve been meaning to raise them, but now with the third seat I definitely wanted the option to kneel more easily. We made a quick and dirty mock up to get an idea of comfortable seat height for kneeling:
We ended up wanting around 9-10” below the seat, which I think is fairly tall, and this worked out to about a 2” drop from below the gunwales. The P15 is a deep boat and this wouldn’t be possible on a lot of shallower boats I believe.
We did run into a little trouble with the very long seat drop bolts as I drilled the holes for a very tight fit. I wanted them to almost thread in the seat for a tighter fit. The drops had a larger pre-drilled hole than I thought they needed, but after trying to align the long bolts they made sense. I ended up drilling the holes in the seats out just a touch so the bolts could pass through easily which helped it all come together better. It’s hard to get perfect alignment when drilling the gunwales, and that long bolt can bind if the other holes are too tight.
Overall I think it turned out well:
The two inches narrower is very noticeable visually. I liked the looks before but this does seem better to me. The distance to the bow seat is really good for me, but someone over 6ft might find it too short and want to move or remove it (or may be able to use the bow seat as a foot brace…). The boat also seems a little rounder in the bottom, which also makes sense. I imagine it will feel a bit tippier due to this coupled with the higher seat, but kneeling easier should offset this somewhat. The boat also had massive initial stability to begin with, so it had some to spare I feel. It may also be a little faster with the more rounded bottom and being narrower, and may track a touch easier with the rocker change, but I’ll have to try it out to know for sure how the performance was really affected. My hope is that the maneuverability is still pretty great. Anecdotally the boat also seems much stiffer than it was before when handling/moving it around, possibly because of the increased arch in the bottom. Maybe it will oilcan less? Sitting in the center of the new seat, it’s still a hair too wide for a good reach, but it’s also not as bad as I feared. I also tend to prefer one sided paddling and heeling the boat over a bit so I’ll probably be more to one side anyway. When offset to one side just a little bit it felt great, but the real test will be in the water. The seat being higher also makes it easier to reach over the gunwale, offsetting the width issue some. Overall I think I’m going to like it this way a lot, but only time on the water will tell. I’m dying to try it out now, but it’ll have to wait until at least next weekend, and some warmer weather would be nice…
I have primarily paddled it solo, from the bow seat facing backwards, trimmed with ballast in the other end. It is a bit of a nitpick, but the ballast situation has been somewhat inconvenient, as the placement of the bow seat requires a fair bit of weight for trimming. I have been filling a large dry sack with river water at the put ins, but the bag is heavy and unwieldy when filled with water, and is mildly inconvenient to dry out well when I get home (I usually set it up with a fan blowing on it so it won’t mildew, etc) and have to reposition it a few times over the course of the day to get it fully dry.
I’d like a more elegant solution, almost like a true solo canoe…. However, I really like this boat so I decided to add a third seat. I also figured it’s easy to change it back to stock, minus some new hardware in the gunwales if I didn’t like it.
The main reason I believe people do not do this on the P15 more frequently is that it is a very wide boat. The mfg. stated max width is 37”, although I measured it a little over that. I think plenty of people would prefer the ease of trimming from the center, and the ability to have better control with easier bow reach, but putting a seat in the center on this boat means a pretty far reach to the water that deters most people. I have read that Royalex/T-Formex boats can be narrowed, and thought I’d attempt it while I’m installing the new seat. This made things a little more tricky, and I wanted to do this very cautiously and without changing the performance of the boat too much. More on that in a little bit. Also, again, should be easy to go back to stock if I don’t like it. Due to the width, I went with a Northstar extra wide seat, they say it is reinforced for the wider span. To match I also used their thwarts and changed my handles out while I was at it. I really like their somewhat darker stained ash, and their thwarts are nicer looking. They kinda make the Wenonah yoke/thwarts look pretty clunky in comparison.
So here’s a rough placement “before” shot with the new seat laid over the original setup:
Before going very far I wanted to get an idea of what I was going to affect by narrowing the boat. I put the boat on my utility trailer and leveled the bed with the tongue jack, and a level in multiple places. To get an idea of how much I would affect the rocker, I measured from the trailer tongue to the tip of the stem in the bow, and from the concrete floor to the tip of the stem in the stern. Then, being careful to not move the boat, I removed the yoke and used a ratchet strap to *carefully* bring in the center. We then re-measured.
We found that by bringing the center in 2”, it caused both stems to drop by ~1/2”. This boat has a ton of rocker and maneuverability, so this loss at the stems did not seem to be a deal breaker for me. Additionally, the tumblehome became a little more pronounced as one would expect. Maximum width below the gunwales is hard to measure, and did change a little, but appeared to be less than I expected. The boat also measured slightly deeper according to my father but I did not verify this. I assume the boat is also slightly longer than it was before, but didn’t measure as it wasn’t a big concern of mine.
We left the ratchet strap in place to install both thwarts, and then removed it before installing the seat. Before cutting the thwarts or seat we made blanks/dummy pieces to check the fit and our measurements and I’m glad we did. Matching the taper of the boat on the ends of the pieces was a little more challenging than expected and several of the blanks we cut ended up too short by ~1/4” or so. This also happened when measuring the seat width because the drops place the seat at a different width than up near the gunwales. Using the blanks, we were able to make critical corrections before actually cutting the seat/thwarts. With this method everything came out great in the end with a good fit.
For the seat, I wanted it quite a bit higher than the stock Wenonah seats. I’ve never been able to kneel comfortably in this boat due to how low the seats are and how difficult it is to get my feet under them. I’ve been meaning to raise them, but now with the third seat I definitely wanted the option to kneel more easily. We made a quick and dirty mock up to get an idea of comfortable seat height for kneeling:
We ended up wanting around 9-10” below the seat, which I think is fairly tall, and this worked out to about a 2” drop from below the gunwales. The P15 is a deep boat and this wouldn’t be possible on a lot of shallower boats I believe.
We did run into a little trouble with the very long seat drop bolts as I drilled the holes for a very tight fit. I wanted them to almost thread in the seat for a tighter fit. The drops had a larger pre-drilled hole than I thought they needed, but after trying to align the long bolts they made sense. I ended up drilling the holes in the seats out just a touch so the bolts could pass through easily which helped it all come together better. It’s hard to get perfect alignment when drilling the gunwales, and that long bolt can bind if the other holes are too tight.
Overall I think it turned out well:
The two inches narrower is very noticeable visually. I liked the looks before but this does seem better to me. The distance to the bow seat is really good for me, but someone over 6ft might find it too short and want to move or remove it (or may be able to use the bow seat as a foot brace…). The boat also seems a little rounder in the bottom, which also makes sense. I imagine it will feel a bit tippier due to this coupled with the higher seat, but kneeling easier should offset this somewhat. The boat also had massive initial stability to begin with, so it had some to spare I feel. It may also be a little faster with the more rounded bottom and being narrower, and may track a touch easier with the rocker change, but I’ll have to try it out to know for sure how the performance was really affected. My hope is that the maneuverability is still pretty great. Anecdotally the boat also seems much stiffer than it was before when handling/moving it around, possibly because of the increased arch in the bottom. Maybe it will oilcan less? Sitting in the center of the new seat, it’s still a hair too wide for a good reach, but it’s also not as bad as I feared. I also tend to prefer one sided paddling and heeling the boat over a bit so I’ll probably be more to one side anyway. When offset to one side just a little bit it felt great, but the real test will be in the water. The seat being higher also makes it easier to reach over the gunwale, offsetting the width issue some. Overall I think I’m going to like it this way a lot, but only time on the water will tell. I’m dying to try it out now, but it’ll have to wait until at least next weekend, and some warmer weather would be nice…
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